Three Things to Know About An Education Star Carey Mulligan

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We already knew that Carey Mulligan has serious style, but here's what else we learned when the English actress was in New York this week for the premiere of An Education.

1) The fresh-faced 24-year-old had no reservations about playing a 16-year-old schoolgirl in the film. "In my first job, I was supposed to be 15-16, and I was 18-19 in real life. Then I did a play where I was 14. It's only recently that I've started playing my own age. The script was so detailed and her age was informed by the way she treated people around her. I also didn't think there was a huge difference between being 16 and 24. The changes that you make between those ages are really small. You become better at capping your emotions. I made my voice a tiny bit higher because I've got a low voice in real life, but I didn't really think about it too much."

2) Her cinematic idols have played a vital role in her own education. "I didn't go to drama school. My first job was Pride and Prejudice, so from the beginning, I've been surrounded by people who I admire. It was like, day one: Judi Dench. And I'm still treating that as my training—observing how everybody else does it. Emma Thompson is probably my biggest female influence. We had one day to shoot all our scenes together, so that was a highlight. She was amazing—she knew the first names of the whole crew by 11am. And then in the evening, we ran over by about half an hour, so she got beer and wine and pizza for everyone."

3) Her first role (in Joe Wright's 2005 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice) began with a letter. "It was to Julian Fellowes, who'd given a talk at our school when I was about 17 about winning the Oscar for Gosford Park and being a screenwriter. I applied to drama school, didn't get in, and in using my university application to apply for drama school, I didn't get any places at university. I reapplied and got in, but I knew I'd just drop out. So I wrote to him and said, `I know that I want to act but I don't think I'm going to get through the three years before I can try again to get into drama school.' He took me out to dinner with a bunch of people who'd written the same kind of letter. He and his wife introduced me to Maggie Lunn. And her assistant knew the assistant to Jina Jay, who was putting young girls who'd never acted professionally on tape for Pride and Prejudice, to play the younger sisters. I met Joe Wright and auditioned about three times, and that's how I got the job."